My own view is that most high school seniors and parents dramatically overvalue the undergraduate education.
Tuition at my alma mater, BC, is now well over $40K per year. This cost is probably consistent with the other major private colleges in the state: Harvard, BU, the Seven Sisters, MIT. UMass is, I believe, now in the range of $15K per year for in-state students.
My experience is that the gold-plate on a graduate degree (at least a professional degree; PhD’s in sociology may differ) is MUCH more valuable than the gold-plating on the undergraduate degree. In my field, for example, Harvard Law, BC Law, and BU Law graduates get spots at big firms earning big paychecks, and graduates of the other local law schools, while not totally shut out of that market, do not have an easy time at all breaking in. Of course, after a very short period of time, the professional differential evaporates: I doubt there is any correlation between being a good lawyer and where one goes to law school. But the initial leg up cannot be denied. Those who do not go the biglaw route know that their recent classmates who did spent at least a few years earning an order of magnitude more than you.
I don’t think that the gold-plated undergrad degree has a similar effect. In my law school class, there were UMass grads and Harvard grads, and we were all on the same plane. So I have advised high school kids before: if you have a limit to what you can spend on education, spend it on the MBA/JD/MD rather than the undergrad, and make sure to work VERY hard no matter where you go to undergrad.
This raises the question: what is the value of the undergraduate degree?
Are Harvard, BC, and MIT better schools than UMass? In the aggregate, I have no doubt that they are. But are they better to the tune of $30,000 per year? That is the real question facing parents and high school students. I’m really not sure that they are, and it pains me to say this because I truly enjoyed my own undergraduate experience at BC.
I have friends that argue that intellectual millieu is different at an elite school compared to a state school, and that this plays a big role in one’s education: say, sitting around and talking with other smart people about intellectual matters. Even if one is in the Commonwealth College at UMass, you don’t get the same intellectual stimulation in places other than class that you would at, say, Dartmouth.
I suspect that this is a reasonable justification for the comparitively greater cost of an elite private school compared with UMass. I am not so sure that it justifies the degree of difference. Even if the experience is more valuable at an elite school, it is not infinitely valuable. There must be a limit.
It sure seems like the market for pricey undergraduate degrees is way over-priced at this point. $180K for a BA degree?!
To the extent that theree is a bubble, it is inflated at least in part by the easy availability of student loans. When the loans are government-backed, this is even more so, because the money is somewhat cheaper. So, the more student loans are made available, the more the bubble inflates, and the less student loans are made available, the less access for the underprivileged to education at an elite institution.
Yes, the piece of paper is often overvalued. However, a great argument can be made that the other aspects of undergrad are undervalued. You mentioned the chance to digest and synthesize ideas with other students. And the list extends far beyond that.
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An additional factor in determining this hypothetical monetary value of a individual bachelor’s degrees would have to be a student. I know people who commuted, cruised through college just to get the piece of paper, in and out every day, just gain entry into a white collar job sector – it seems some people leave college none the wiser. I know others who delved into the college experience – true junior scholars, inquisitive, took advantage of internships, independent studies, honors programs, wrote conference papers as undergrads, participated in national symposia, connected to student organizations, etc.
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Personify my two archetypes and send them to the same school, give them same degree at the same tuition, books, and fees. Say they earn equal grades and happen to earn the same starting salary (or are accepted to the same grad school). All other things being equal, who gets the better value for their $50k-$180k?
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My only point in this display of wind-baggery is the benefits of higher education are so hard to quantify and therefore it’s hard to explain the benefits and the wastefulness of college to anyone. It’s not always useful to break down college costs in terms of only the piece of paper. And it’s not as if I fully understand the scope of such things myself.
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Sometimes college can be the most enriching experience in one’s life, other times it can be a footnote on a resume to get you in the door of a job that only requires a bachelor’s degree in order to filter out resumes of the hundreds of otherwise qualified candidates.
When talking about the ‘value’ of a college education, the money you earn as a result of a degree and the money invested in it is only part of ‘value’. A person is enriched by a social atmosphere, has an opportunity to make connections in different fields (the know people factor) and is exposed to all different types of people and ways of life.
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Similarly, someone who does a Voc and goes right into the workplace right out school is put in a position where there is more of an “on your own” factor. You take what you’ve learned and get to it do it. My dad went to a Voc, and now at the age of 50-something, he’s in the management of the company he joined when he was 19 (name changes of company notwithstanding). So you go into a Voc for electrical, get tossed into the workplace right out of high school, and you’re exposed to a totally different world than those who don’t enter it til their are 22 or 23.
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But really, the question is, is whether a college education will help you be happy some day. I’m majoring in Operations Management, but I really really love history. However, I chose to go with more money than my real passion. It was a tradeoff. Some people go the other path. There’s a facebook group to the effect of “I have a degree I love and someday I’ll be living in a Box.”
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If someone goes to a voc school and really loves carpentry, who’s to say a BA in somethingorother is more valuable? It’s all relative.
Sure, it’s not about the money for the student, especially once he/she is in.
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But for the parent, with maybe three kids, looking down the barrel of over a half million dollars in tuition costs so that their kids can go to Princeton or Georgetown ot Tufts, it really is nearly all about the money.
…hey, dad, if you’re reading this: F-you buddy. Lol.
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But I do hear what you’re saying.
money is a big part of being happy, but it’s not the end all to be all or something like that.
Kids, you’re going to state school, or you’re on your own in terms of financing.
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‘Nuff said. My brother got a full scholarship, for football, to Northeastern. My sister cried her ass off because she couldn’t go to Syracuse, or whatever school it was she wanted to go to in Texas. Both of them ended up eventually being happy, but none more so than the other. I don’t think it’s wrong – in any way – for a parent to lay down that kind of law: children always have to options of taking massive loans or finding other ways to go to wherever they want (transferring after a year or two of going to a cheaper Uni is a good option).
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My mother was far more lenient and said no such thing when I was choosing, but in the end I chose UMASS Dartmouth because, honestly, it was just as good as a Northeastern-type school academically – and I wouldn’t have over a hundred thousand in loans that either I’d have to pay off or beg my mother to help for years and years to come. I also had the forsight, as a Sr in high school, to consider the costs of Grad School as well. The $20k or so I’m in debt (and will have to start paying soon) is quite enough, thank you very much.
Depending on your field, you can spend your big money on an advanced degree, and if not, you have far more flexibility to work in a lower paying field without impoverishing yourself.
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In an unrelated matter, do you think that the architect that designed that Umass Dartmouth campus ever had work as an architect again?
Look at Government Center. The simularities that exist between the two sites isn’t just a coincidence. The architect is actually quite famous – highly respected in the field, hated by pretty much everyone outside it.
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In any event, all of UMASS is pretty much falling apart and eventually needs to be replaced sooner rather than later. There’s one thing that’s beyond obvious: his architectural style + concrete (which, honestly, was his style) = crappy buildings that fall apart. They clearly didn’t account for the longterm strain from the massive weight of all the concrete used in construction (part of the Science and Engineering building was condemned last semester because it was cracked and about to fall, but don’t worry, band aids are imminent).
I should have known it was Paul Rudolph. I always thought that he should have been sentenced to spend his entire life in one of his own buildings.
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At least when they all fall down, someone will have to replce them with something else.
Serious answer:
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You’re absolutely right: spend the dough on a grad degree, if necessary. (There are lots of good state school masters programs, depending on one’s interests. Hell, Massachusetts has a top-notch, affordable medical school to boot.)
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What matters in getting into good grad schools is your GPA and whatever necessary test scores apply, not whether you went to Harvard or UMASS. I don’t think that’s a big secret.
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Non-serious answer:
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Though it’s only sort of related…
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There are so many people with BAs today that a lot of jobs which don’t even pay well are still hard to get, such as many jobs in the non-profit sector. So, after Susie Q had her parents pay for her $160k education at BU for English, she’ll be absolutely pumped when she’s hired to Lambda Legal or the MFA or something. It almost makes me wish that people had to pay for their own education and parents couldn’t.
…I wrote THIS
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Read, discuss among yourselves. And note the inherent classism in the comments from the fans of academe – that equally young and uneducated thinkers in your college class are in some intrinsic way superior to people with more experience and greater diversity of thought that you would necessarily meet in the world of work.